112 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I9OO. 



TESTING GRASS SEED. 

 Chas. D. Woods. 



The Legislature of 1897 entcted a law entitled "An Act to 

 regulate the sale of agricultural seeds." This act makes it the 

 duty of the Director of the Station to prescribe the methods to be 

 used in examining seeds, and to "publish equitable standards of 

 purity together with such other information concerning agricul- 

 tural seeds as may be of public benefit." 



The standards and methods of analysis were published as 

 Bulletin 36 of this Station, copies of which can still be had on 

 application. 



Since the enactment of the seed law in Maine quite a number 

 of samples (chiefly grass seeds) have been received by the Sta- 

 tion for examination. Five grams of all the seeds submitted 

 (excepting redtop of which only two grams were inspected) 

 were examined. The inert matter and foreign seeds were sepa- 

 rated by hand and then the foreign seeds classified into harmful 

 and noxious. The inert matter and foreign seeds were weighed 

 and the per cent calculated. The weed seeds were usually 

 counted so as to give the number in a pound and the names of 

 the weeds determined by comparison with sets of named seeds. 



The samples of seeds received in 1898 were reported on pages 

 60-62 of the Report of the Station for that year. The samples 

 examined in 1899 are here reported. 



The inert matter consisted of sand, fragments of stems and 

 leaves, chaff, whole insects, fragments of insects and insect 

 excreta. The harmless foreign seed consisted mostly of redtop 

 and clover in timothy, timothy, red top and clover in alsike and 

 timothy and clover in redtop. Most of the samples examined 

 came from outside the State and were purchased to sell as seed. 



The kinds and amount of weed seeds found in the samples 

 examined leads to the belief that seed for planting is not the 

 only source of weeds in the State. A good many of the weed 

 seeds found in the samples would not grow. An examination 

 of whole grain brought in by the car-load and distributed in the 

 State shows that it frequently carries many weed seeds. Inter- 



